Teaching Film... in 2026?
Yes, you read that right. I'm teaching core film editing principles in 2026.
Recently I was at a university, teaching a class on Avid Media Composer and editing techniques. It was a captive, highly intelligent audience who asked all the terrific questions you would hope a class today would ask. However, due to today's consumption of media on phones and other devices, I knew that there would be one specific disconnect that I'd have to bridge... Frames. What are they? What are their mechanics inside of an editing app?
Everyone in the class had heard of frame rates. But I wanted them to TRULY understand them. It was time to get back to basics. To teach the VALUE that every frame has, I need them to see frames -- real frames -- in their hands.
I arrived at the class armed with my Guillotine Splicer from many years ago, as well as a "BAG OF TIME". What is a bag of time? Simple - it was filled with 30 strips of 16mm film, which I had pre-cut to exactly 24 frames each.
For those of you counting, that's 30-seconds of film in the "bag of time".
The instruction was simple: Cut this down to exactly 10 frames. It was an exercise to very directly show the "Avid +9 rule", where you are sitting on frame-1, and then you need to have a total of 10 frames.
So, the question posed to the class was: "Would you move forward 9 frames or move forward 10?".